ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies

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Alan Moore and the Graphic Novel: Confronting the Fourth Dimension

Though comic books and graphic novels are earning more serious academic
consideration than ever, in relation to one of the foremost goals of twentieth
century art and literature, comic books may be more important and innovative
than even the most open-minded of scholars have yet to realize. Comics,
graphic novels, and sequential art belong to a rich artistic and literary
tradition due in no small part to their ability to utilize the techniques
of cubism and futurism. This is not a new assertion. Will Eisner (Comics
and Sequential Art; Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative) and
Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), among many others, have
examined comic art's multiple influences from forms and movements considered
"high" or fine art. What has hitherto been unexplored, however, is how purely
sequential art forms utilize aspects of these movements to fulfill the elusive
goals and ideals of many of cubism and futurism's most renowned creators
via a unique relationship with the space-time continuum. Indeed, no media
before or after the comic book, and more specifically, the graphic novel,
has fully bridged the fourth dimension as well. Comics and graphic novels,
we argue, constitute the 20th century culmination of the goals of these
other pivotal modern and postmodern genres.

Before moving this argument forward, it is imperative to establish an
understanding of what is meant herein by the term "fourth dimension." The
term to us refers to a special relationship with space and time wherein
the two conflate such that infinite multiple dimensionalities become simultaneously
present. When the reader's interaction, his or her own space-time, is accounted
for, this evocation of space-time becomes quite literal and expands exponentially.
The fourth dimension is bridged by human experience and interaction. The
spontaneous, real-time interplay of all these forces at once create an ethereal
dimension of its own, also what we refer to as the fourth dimension. Therefore,
the fourth dimension is defined as simultaneous, multitudinous dimensionality
deeply entwined in and part of individual experience. There is special artistry
in sequential art and narratives in the relationship of this metaphorical
and literal space-time continuum. This artistry does not make the comic
book or graphic novel superior to all art, but unique in its absolute expression
of ideals that modernist writers and artists sought independently (and therefore
less successfully) in their writings and sketches.

Concerns with the space-time continuum and fourth dimensionality are a
reoccurring theme in the work of one of comics' most acclaimed and prolific
writers, Alan Moore. He is the Picasso of his art when it comes to bridging
the fourth dimension and therefore worth particular consideration. Examining
samples of Moore's work from his seminal and groundbreaking graphic novels
Watchmen and From Hell show how he is able to
use the cubist and futurist tendencies of the comics medium to superbly
explore notions of space and time.

Before examining Moore's works, we should consider first some of the
basic principles of cubism and futurism. Edward F. Fry describes the cubist
notions of Pablo Picasso that began to emerge at the turn of the twentieth
century as a reaction against "one-point perspective" (14) and claims that
Picasso's strongest cubist works strive to "[combine] multiple view points
into a single form" (15). An observer of said works does not see an object
from one side or one angle, but is subjected to simultaneous, multitudinous
angles from which the object or objects (or persons, or ideas) could be
viewed. The end result in terms of flat canvas is a meshing of "selfness"
that is more truly the object than any one fixed perspective could provide.
Indeed, Picasso can be said to be presenting a version of art more true
to the "thing itself" in that he strives to express many states of being
at once. When the viewer interacts with the work, time, space, and real-time
experience meld. Hence, quite literally, dimensions cross: there is a concrete
positioning of the viewer in his or her own space and time added into the
already interdimensionality of the work itself. The object is in time, in
space on flat canvas, yet simultaneously viewed and experienced via multiple
depictions (/directions/dimensions) expressing the object within space-time.

For example, Guernica (1937), which can be seen as a sequential
magnum opus in one frame, explores a large span of time within a relative
small space and surveys the horrid destruction of the town not from any
one literal angle, but not from one perspective as well. The
horse, the bull, the disembodied people: all express elementally the totality
of the subject being portrayed. When the viewer digests all of these perspectives,
he or she completes the bridge, if the work is successful, by being with
everyone and everything at once, both everywhere and engaged in the present
simultaneously.

Fry also discusses the cubist paintings of Cezanne, explaining that "In
painting a motif Cézanne would [. . .] organize his subject according to
the separate acts of perception he had experienced" (14). Basically, cubism
strove to dissolve conventional notions of time, space, and the single,
static image by showing an object observed and perceived from a multitude
of viewpoints at different points in time. Even the most successful of these
works, however, lack the power of graphic novels to bridge fully that fourth
dimensional gap.

In her book Futurism and its Place in the Development
of Modern Poetry, Zbigniew Folejewski claims, "Cubism, with its insistence
on decomposing the shape of things and rearranging it into a new multidimensional
vision, was one of the earliest manifestations of the tendencies which were
developed into a coherent programme by Futurism" (5). Take, for example,
Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms Of Continuity in Space (1913)
[Figure 1]. The anthropomorphic bronze cast appears to
represent a figure in motion, a figure not here or there, but both and everywhere
in between: simultaneous dimensionality. Dynamic curves fuse with twists
and discombobulations to give the essence of speedy movement, yet Boccioni
strives, just as Picasso so often does, to show the figure en masse from
every angle by which it could be moving. This both creates the blur effect
that many are familiar with via photography and displaces the form and the
observer from one stationary perspective to one of many. Of course, within
this being of many spaces at once, the figure and the observer are literally
still in one station. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase
(1912) [Figure 2] is perhaps a better example of art transcending
time and space. In terms of the graphic novel, the painting appears to be
a multitude of sequential panels overlapped to explore the full idea of
a brief movement. The observer, in his or her own time and space, transcends
placement by noticing the various different motions over time--frozen in
oil on canvas--concerned with a simple action.

Figure 1. Boccioni, Umberto. Unique Forms Of Continuity
in Space. 1913. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Cubism's occupation with multiple perspectives
led to futurism and its examination of movement, growth, and time. The concepts
behind these two movements are found in a literary incarnation through artists
such as Gertrude Stein. According to Malcolm Bradbury, Stein wanted "to
find [cubism's] equivalent in fiction" (240) and sought create a "new composition"
with the written word that would be a product of the new space-time continuum
with which the cubists and futurists were experimenting. One of the novels
that emerged from Stein's experimentations, Three Lives, she
claimed as "the first definite step away from the Nineteenth and into the
Twentieth Century in literature" (250). In this novel, Stein uses her ideas
on collective consciousness to create an original literature that breaks
down common notices of time and place, just as Picasso, a friend of hers,
and the other cubists were doing in the visual arts. An example of Stein's
exploration of the space-time continuum is Melanctha, a character from Three
Lives; Melanchta is supposed to live in the "continuous present,"
and Stein hoped that this concept would displace conventional past tense
narrative by somehow making the past, present, and future into a continual
state of always, already omnipresence, or, again, a sort of dimensional
simultaneity.

While this novel and other works by Stein and the other literary cubists
were great efforts, the written word, in and of itself, was too limited
to offer an all-new exploration of the space-time continuum. What was needed
was a genre with a unique interplay of words and images. A step into the
literary fourth dimension couldn't truly take place without a return to
where Stein originally drew her inspiration: the visual arts. Thus, the
literary cubists and futurists could find an artistic successor in the most
unlikely of places: sequential art, a dynamic combination of texts and visuals.
While comic strips printed in book form had been around since the 1930s,
the modern graphic novel evolved throughout the twentieth century and began
to be recognized as a cogent genre (disputably) by the 1960s or 70s. The
graphic novel is an art form that finally has the adequate tools to transcend
written text and to create the appropriate medium necessary for entering
the fourth dimension.

Figure 3. Eisner, Will. "Life of Hersh" Contract With God, p. 22.

Will Eisner's A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories
from 1978 is one example where we see a successful bridge of the space-time
continuum. Through Eisner's use of his characters' memories and flashbacks,
the involved partaker is truly able to be at more than one place in time at
one time. Take, for example, the account of the childhood of Frimme Hersh's
adopted daughter in "A Contract With God." While the narrator's voice through
the text keeps us grounded in the present, the past comes alive vividly through
the drawings (placed side-by-side with the text) [Figure 3],
and this combination allows for a true "continuous present." Just as in Picasso's
Guernica, this continuous present enables the audience to consider the totality
of a thing; in this case, the "thing" in question is Frimme Hersh's intense
love and devotion for his daughter, shown through various scenes from her childhood,
presented all at once on one page. Eisner's technical mastery is apparent here,
but what is also noteworthy is how Eisner is able to use joining of space and
time to create an emotional resonance. By presenting the life of Hersh and his
daughter in such a whirlwind, all-at-once manner, the reader is devastated when,
on the very next page, an illness attacks his daughter "suddenly and fatally."
Her death is the axis around which this whole tale revolves, and Eisner's use
of sequential storytelling makes this tragic event jarring and memorable. What
the narrator makes clear as an event in the past happens as he speaks it, forcing
a new relationship with "now" and "then" in which the two not only coincide,
but coexist.

Eisner's pioneering work in the graphic novel led the way for other comic
book writers and artists to exploit more fully the fourth dimensional possibilities
of the graphic novel, but he was far from the only influence. In the early
twentieth century, Winsor McCay's (Little Nemo in Slumberland,
etc.) dynamic panel work broke up the "beat-by-beat segmentation of time
and space of earlier comics, reminiscent of a slide show of successive still
images"(Carey). As well, throughout his long career, Harvey Kurtzman (perhaps
most known for helping to create Mad) created comic works that
express a skillful, precise manipulation of narrative time, for example.
However, Alan Moore, a disciple of Kurtzman's style, who emerged from Britain
in the early 1980s, would be the figure to refine the space-time exceptionality
of comics to an overtly intentional creative force rarely paralleled. Like
Eisner, Moore's comic work also makes use of sequential art's ability to
create a continuous present. What makes Moore's work so interesting, however,
is that he not only expertly uses sequential art's ability to simulate the
fourth dimension in the telling of his stories, but he is also preoccupied
with the space-time continuum as a theme. Moore is deliberate in his utilization
of techniques unique to sequential art that deal with space-time, and his
calculated interplay provides his own commentary on the possibility of a
fourth dimension. Further, he strives to express how the discovery of this
dimension affects human existence. As he explains it:

I try to see things in four dimensions. I feel that if we regard
Time as a fourth dimension, then in order to have any sense of what we
as individuals mean, what our lives mean, we really have to know where
those lives came from, how we got to this current position whether as
personally or in terms of cultures, nations, you know, entire histories
running back to the Paleaeolithic. All these things seem fascinating to
me [. . .]. (Millidge 111-12)

As artists and writers before him saw objects from multiple posits, Moore
sees people as simultaneous beings and grants them the possibility of consciousness
thereof. When those "simultaneous beings" are readers of his deliberate
comic narratives, their experiences further conflate the simultaneous, multitudinal
dimensionality that he sees as omnipresent.

A good place to begin a discussion of Moore and the fourth dimension is
with his graphic novel from 1986-87 Watchmen, a collaboration
with artist Dave Gibbons and a major touchstone of comic book storytelling.
Much has been made of Moore and Gibbons' skillful use of such literary devices
as flashback and foreshadowing in Watchmen, but what is perhaps
more interesting is how the usage of these techniques allows Moore and Gibbons
to create a text in which the present and the past merge together with enough
fluidity to make even the best cubists and futurists envious. From the very
opening pages of Watchmen, it is clear that the reader is in
for a virtuoso bridging of space and time, made all the more complete by
his or her own role.

For example, while two detectives investigate the apartment where the
Comedian, a costumed adventurer, has been murdered, we are able both to
hear about the murder through their dialogue and to see it through Gibbons'
graphic illustrations of the crime that are spliced in-between the detectives'
examination of the murder scene. Through the combination of texts and visuals,
we, the readers, are truly in both places at the same time as well as in
our own space; this amazing bridge of the space-time continuum is, we argue,
particular to sequential art, certainly the culmination of major goals of
twentieth century art, and perfectly expressed by Moore. Also, just as with
Eisner, this yoking together of space and time is much more than just a
neat technical trick. Discussing the relationship between past and present,
Moore explains, "I think that if we are to value the present and to really
get as much as we can out of each present moment, it would help if we understood
how this moment has arisen, if we understood how incredibly rich and savage
and beautiful our history can be" (Millidge 112). In this opening scene,
Moore and Gibbons are not only able to show the present moment juxtaposed
beside the violence that created it, but they also "get as much as they
can out of each present moment" by conveying how violence and "savagery"
from the past can continue both to rupture the present (notice how, in one
panel, the elevator operator announces "Ground floor comin' up" in the present
as the panel shows the Comedian being thrown out of the window of his high-rise
apartment in the past [Figure 4]) and to reverberate throughout
the space-time continuum.

Figure 4. Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen, p. 3.

Moore and Gibbons continue to explore the potentials of comic book storytelling
in the second chapter of Watchmen. The main focus of this chapter
is the funeral of the Comedian, a gathering attended by most of the main
characters. The reader learns about the Comedian's life through the flashbacks
of these characters. For example, as Dr. Manhattan, an atomic and quantum
powered superhero, stands by the Comedian's graveside, Gibbons' panels pull
in tighter on him [Figure 5], and we notice a man holding
a bouquet of flowers standing just over his shoulder. In the next panel,
the bouquet transforms into a blast of fireworks, and we are suddenly in
Vietnam right after the war, experiencing Dr. Manhattan's disturbing memory
of the Comedian's murder of his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend. Just as
in the opening scene with the detectives, Moore and Gibbons show how the
historic is able to manifest itself with facility in the present, and no
other medium beside the comics page, where images are presented simultaneously
on a grid, could present this dilemma with such ease and precision. The
reader is engaged in simultaneous, multitudinous placement: the funeral,
various events from Vietnam, and in his or her own real space. In Watchmen,
Moore and Gibbons create what Stein longed for: a "continuous present."

Figure 5. Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen.

One of Moore and Gibbons' most powerful and innovative bridgings of the
space-time continuum takes place at the end of this chapter. As Rorschach,
an obsessive hero bent on solving the Comedian's murder, meditates on the
bitter ironies and the cruelty of human existence, the reader is privy both
to his narrative in the captions and to spliced-together memories of the
Comedian's life taken from all the flashbacks from the chapter in the panels.
While Rorschach's words keep the audience grounded in the present, they
can see different brutal scenes from the Comedian's life, disparate images
taken from different points in time that now occupy the same space on a
grid. In her book, The Futurist Moment, Marjorie Perloff claims
that one of the mediums in which futurism has found its most powerful means
of expression is the collage, an artistic form that "incorporates directly
into the work an actual fragment of the referent, thus forcing the reader
or viewer to consider the interplay between preexisting message or material
and the new artistic composition that results from the graft" (viii), and
this collage of the Comedian's life, coupled with Rorschach's text, creates
an intimate, horrifying, and poignantly sad portrait of the Comedian's life
in a way that only sequential art is able. The reader absorbs images of
the Comedian raping the Silk Spectre, the Comedian fearlessly brandishing
a riot gun amidst a cloud of tear gas, the Comedian being attacked and disfigured
by his Vietnamese girlfriend, the Comedian weeping and clutching a bottle
of liquor, and the Comedian being humiliated, beaten, and murdered by Ozymandias.
The interplay between these images forces the reader to consider the Comedian
in his horrifying totality (i.e Guernica[Figure 6])
and to notice how the Comedian's choices have created shockwaves that ripple
throughout his entirety. In order to achieve this effect, Moore and Gibbons
have truly made time a tangible dimension on this comic page. Hence, we
see that neither Stein nor Picasso nor Boccioni had it exactly right: neither
art nor literature could successfully bridge the fourth dimensions on its
own, but a medium utilizing both in tandem accomplishes their goals with
an astonishing ease worthy of respectful, critical attention.

No discussion of the space-time continuum in Watchmen would
be complete without emphasis given to Dr. Manhattan, a superhero granted
God-like powers by an atomic accident. Dr. Manhattan can transform the molecular
structure of any object, teleport to anywhere in the universe, and is slowing
becoming omnipotent. Throughout the graphic novel, Manhattan struggles with
his humanity; he seems to be losing touch with human experience as we know
it due to his amazing ability to never age and to be aware always of the
past, present, and the future. Again, Moore and Gibbons are able to allow
the reader to see the world through Dr. Manhattan's eyes as only sequential
art can by exploiting fully its fourth dimensional powers. Chapter Four
of Watchmen, in which Dr. Manhattan exiles himself to Mars
and considers his origin, is a tour-de-force in comics storytelling. In
the first panel on the first page of the chapter, the reader sees Dr. Manhattan's
hand holding a photograph of him and his ex-girlfriend. Manhattan's captions
read, "The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a
woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959" [Figure 7].
In the next panel, the reader sees the photograph lying on the red Martian
terrain, surrounded by footprints that signify that Manhattan has dropped
the photo and wondered off. Manhattan states, "In twelve seconds time, I
drop the photograph to the sand at my feet, walking away. It's already lying
there, twelve seconds into the future." The reader finds the photo back
in Manhattan's hand in the next panel as Manhattan reveals that he "found
it in a derelict bar at the Gila Flats test base, twenty-seven hours ago."
The reader is at the bar with Manhattan in the next panel, looking at the
photo as he duly notes, "It's still there [. . .]. I'm still there looking
at it."

Figure 7. Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen.

This sequence would be of little note if it were played out in a novel
or film; after all, most everyone is familiar with stream of consciousness
in prose and crosscutting (moving back and forth between two or more scenes)
in film. When sequential art is used as the medium, however, this sequence
is an exceptional experience. As the audience ingests the comics page as
a whole, they are with Dr. Manhattan every step of the way. When the setting
turns back to Manhattan at the derelict bar, the reader is there with him,
just as the reader is, at the same time, back on Mars with him. After all,
while observing the panel that shows Manhattan in the bar, the panel showing
Manhattan on Mars is still within eyeshot. This all combines with the reader's
actual space to bridge dimensional relations. It could be argued that a
novel could achieve similar results (after all, all the words on a page
are observable all at the same time), and by this same token, one could
claim this same feat could be performed in film through the usage of split-screen.
What gives comics advantage over these other mediums, however, is that while
literature and film must use obtrusive techniques (ruptures in the text,
split screen) to create a tangible fourth dimension, this manipulation of
the space-time continuum is so much part and parcel with the very nature
of sequential art that this bridging of space and time is virtually seamless.
The only way a film can achieve the same fourthth dimensional effects that
a comic can is through the usage of split screen, an effect that takes the
audience out of the film and is very distracting and self-aware. Even in
movies that try to use split screen techniques derivative of comics panels
(Ang Lee's Hulk, for example), it is extremely disconcerting
and ostentatious simply because it is not what viewers are used to experiencing.
In comics, there is none of this tension. It is natural, seamless, and it
is a huge theoretical (and space/time) leap that the reader can take with
relative ease. In comics, even when panels separate actions, seemingly creating
a "fracture of both time and space" the reader's experience forces a sort
of closure that "allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct
a continuous, unified reality" (McCloud 67). That continuous reality, though,
is saturated in interdimensionality, multiple realities, moments, and experiences.

This situation recalls Slavoj Zizek's location of a break between modernism
and postmodernism, a break that "affects the very status of interpretation"
(1). Zizek explains, "A modernist work is by definition 'incomprehensible':
it functions as a shock, as the irruption of a trauma which undermines the
complacency of our daily routine and resists being integrated into the symbolic
universe of the prevailing ideology" (1). Whenever the cubists and futurists
ruptured or fragmented a text, the reader or observer's attention is almost
always called to its initial complexity, if not preliminary incomprehensibility.
Likewise, whenever split screen is used in film, the audience cannot help
but take note and immediately began to speculate on the filmmaker's reasons
for utilizing this technique. On the other hand, Zizek claims that "What
postmodernism does, however, is the very opposite: its objects par excellence
are products with a distinctive mass appeal [. . .] - it is for the interpreter
to detect in them an exemplification of the most esoteric theoretical finesses
of Lacan, Derrida or Foucault. [. . .] [T]he aim of the postmodernist treatment
is to estrange its very initial homeliness" (1-2). Considering that comics
have long been viewed as children's literature or books for adults not intelligent
enough to read "real" books, few art forms have a more "distinctive mass
appeal" than comics, and since this bridging of space and time is so imbedded
in sequential art's basic language system, causing little to no noticeable
"irruption" in the text, comics may very well be, by Zizek's definition,
the epitome of postmodern art.

And the power and essence of this postmodernity is embodied perfectly
in Dr. Manhattan. Indeed, the true genius of Dr. Manhattan is that he seems
to be a metaphor for the art of the graphic novel in and of itself as well
as for the graphic novel experience. He is everywhere all the time as well
as where he is presently. He is not most like any other character in the
book, but most like the reader himself in that he transcends transience,
simple being, via not displacement, but multiplacement, of being
many places at once, mentally and, in the storyline, physically as well.
His character is the fullest, most essential fourth dimensional relationship
in the genre to date. It is fitting that at the conclusion of Watchmen,
Manhattan decides to leave the galaxy of Watchmen for another, where he
hopes to create some human life of his own, just as the reader always has
the power to leave the Watchmen galaxy by simply closing the
book. In addition, both Manhattan and the reader also have the power to
forge life elsewhere: Manhattan, through his molecular powers, and the reader,
by picking up another book or graphic novel of his or her choosing and thus
beginning the interaction between reader and text all over again. Manhattan
leaves Ozymandias (and the galaxy) behind with the ominous proclamation
that "Nothing ever ends," and with Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons
prove his final words to be true both by creating a fourth dimension in
which the reader can witness the reoccurring ripples of history and by embodying
sequential art's relationship with the reader, a relationship that can be
repeated ad infinitum.

It is clear that Moore's work with the fourth dimension and the space-time
continuum is stimulating and empowering for his audience, but Moore can
also use this aspect of sequential storytelling to shock and frighten his
readers in new and unique ways. When Moore deals with the horrifying ramifications
of the possible existence of a fourth dimension, his place in a rich artistic
tradition again becomes apparent as he falls in line with some of the darker,
more cynical futurist ideologies. Zbigniew Folejewski sees futurism largely
as "a reaction, in which cynicism and nihilism alternated with the desire
to seek new beliefs and forge new values" (5), and Moore (who is, interestingly
enough, a self-proclaimed anarchist) often displays this same ambivalent
attitude as he creates and explores fourth dimensional time and the architecture
of history, most notably in another of his major works, From Hell.
In this graphic novel, a mammoth collaboration with artist Eddie Campbell
that took around eight years (1988-96) to complete, the two presuppose that
Jack the Ripper was Sir William Gull, one of Queen Elizabeth's surgeons
on a mission to destroy those who attempted to blackmail the royal family,
and the graphic novel is a harrowing chronicle of the cultural and historical
aftershocks of the Ripper murders and Gull's descent into madness, an insanity
abetted by his growing ability to experience the fourth dimension. At its
very heart, From Hell is a horror story (it began its publishing
history in Stephen Bissette's Taboo, an anthology that was,
at least, intended to be a horror anthology), and it is all the more unnerving
since the reader is able to partake fully of Gull's fourth dimensional hallucinations
via the power of sequential art.

Gull's eventual madness is foreshadowed early in the novel in Chapter
Two, "A State of Darkness." The first page of this chapter consists of eight
panels, all of which are solid black and contain only word balloons [Figure
8]. The caption in the first panel establishes the setting as "The
Limehouse Cut. July 1827," but the dialogue in the subsequent panels makes
no narrative sense. The only continuing thread throughout the page is a
question that is repeated three times: "What is the fourth dimension?" The
reader is, quite literally, left "in the dark" as to how all these bits
of dialogue supposedly fit together, and the question of the fourth dimension
goes unanswered. As the chapter progresses, however, the reader learns that
the narrative begins in July 1827 with Gull as a young child, and the rest
of the chapter recounts Gull's life and experiences. Perhaps when the reader
is about half through reading the chapter, he will realize that all those
bits of dialogue that appear on the first page of the chapter are actually
bits of conversation that arise at different points of Gull's life. Therefore,
it is clear that the mysterious first page of the chapter was, in fact,
a spliced together collage of snippets from Gull's life presented on a grid,
and the audience, by slowing orienting themselves with how space and time
are being manipulated here, is an absolute essential ingredient in bridging
the gap between space and time. The reader moves from a state of darkness
in which the fourth dimension is present all around them but is elusive
and invisible to a point where he is slowing becoming aware of this fourth
dimension, just as Gull does. For this very reason, it is important that
a majority of this chapter is told from Gull's perspective, the panels revealing
to the reader Gull's point of view. As he moves in and out of the darkness
and light, the reader moves along with him, and the readers' experience
is nearly as subjective as Gull's.

Figure 8. Moore and Campbell. From Hell . Ch. 2, pg. 1

At one point in this chapter, Gull has a conversation with his friend,
James Hinton, who discusses some of the ideas of his mathematician son,
Howard Hinton. James tells Gull of his son's theories on time and space,
explaining that Howard's ideas "suggest time is a human illusion . . . that
all times co-exist in the stupendous whole of eternity. [. . .] Fourth dimensional
patterns within Eternity's monolith would, he suggests, seems merely random
events to third dimensional percipients . . . events rising towards inevitable
convergence like an archway's lines." Gull reacts to these ideas by asking,
"Can history then be said to have an architecture? This notion is most glorious
and most horrible."

The "glorious and horrible" architecture of time continues to reveal itself
slowly as the story unfolds and Gull commences on his murderous missions.
During his various murders, he begins to receive brilliant flashes of the
future, but it isn't until Chapter 10, "The Best of All Tailors," which
details Gull's ritualistic and horrorific butchering of prostitute Mary
Kelly, his last murder, that Gull plunges headlong into fourth dimensional
awareness. As the mutilation of Kelly's body becomes more and more severe,
Gull travels back into the past (briefly becoming a Babylonian alchemist)
and sees into his immediate future and beyond. In his appendix notes for
this chapter, Moore discusses some of his influences when composing this
bizarre and disturbing chapter, explaining:

In his splendid book of essays, Mortal Lessons,
Dr. Richard Seltzer (from whom many of Gull's detailed medical pronouncements
in this episode were lifted) talks about the view of life that doctors
have, almost that they alone have been elected to that priesthood that
may look upon the mysteries inside us. It is a similar state of God-like
disassociation from the obvious horror of the flesh that I hoped to create
within the reader's mind by the portrayal of events here. (Appendix 35)

Sequential art allows Moore and Campbell to conceive a true "God-like disassociation"
in this chapter by giving the reader a perspective (Gull's warped perspective)
that flirts with total omnipotence. Just as with Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen,
when Gull travels into the future, the reader travels with him, whilst still
remaining with Gull in that blood soaked room in the surrounding panels.
Near the conclusion of this massacre, Gull cuts Kelly's heart from her carcass
and places it in a kettle over the fire. As the heart burns, a blinding
light explodes from the fireplace, and Gull and the reader, who had both
begun this narrative of From Hell in darkness and ignorance
of the fourth dimension, are moving closer to omnipotence. (Curiously, in
the first printing of this chapter by Kitchen Sink Press in 1995, when Gull
stares into the blinding light emanating from the fireplace, he whispers
"God?" In the first collected edition of From Hell [published
in 1999], however, this line has been omitted.)

Figure 9. Moore and Campbell. From Hell . Ch. 10, pg. 20

The final chapter of From Hell, entitled "Gull, Ascending,"
takes place eight years after the Ripper murders and finds Gull, now a near
comatose lunatic, locked up in an insane asylum. In the last moments of
his life, Gull's consciousness travels back and forth through time and manifests
itself in various time periods until he ascends to godhood in the heavens
[Figure 10]. Just as with Chapter Two, a great deal of
this final chapter is told directly from Gull's point of view, so Gull and
the reader complete their rise from darkness into the light of omnipotence
here. As Gull finally reaches the climax of his journey, everything unravels,
the panels of the grid dissolve away, and the only thing remaining is a
completely white, blank page with the tiny words, "God and then I . . ."
(14.24). Moore and Campbell lead the reader to a catharsis so great, an
omnipotence so overwhelming, that their artistic medium breaks down. The
upswing is that the catharsis of being so intertwined within the process
of bridging the fourth dimension - it is the reader's consciousness that
makes all this possible, after all - need not affect readers in the same
manners of intensity as expressed by Moore's characters. Yet it can not
be underscored that the fourth dimensional play can and does not fully culminate
without the reader interacting with the texts, visual and literal, in much
the same way as a Gull or Dr. Manhattan.

Figure 10. Moore and Campbell. From Hell . Ch. 4, pg. 19

This study is by no means exhaustive. We have only briefly mentioned some
of Moore's influential space-time savvy predecessors, and there are many
other examples of how Moore explores the space-time continuum in his own
oeuvre. For instance, in Batman: The Killing Joke, a collaboration
with Brian Bolland from 1988, Moore uses many of the same techniques used
in Watchmen to fuse together the past and the present. Also,
in his work on Supreme and the unfinished 1963 mini-series
(both published during the 90s by Image Comics), Moore further considers
the mystery and danger surrounding the possible existence of a fourth dimension,
at which he have only hinted. When discussing the nature of comic art in
an essay written in 1985, Moore asked:

Rather than seizing upon the superficial similarities between
comics and films or comics and books in the hope that some of the respectability
of those media will rub off upon us, wouldn't it be more constructive
to focus our attention upon those ideas where comics are special and unique?
Rather than dwelling upon film techniques that comics can duplicate, shouldn't
we perhaps consider comic techniques that films can't duplicate?
(4)

However, this study, we hope, will help bridge the gap in our current space-time
exigency: one where comics and sequential art are still struggling to garner
the respect they deserve. Considering Moore's groundbreaking work in using
comics to bridge the gap between space and time and, as a result, finally
succeeding, it is obvious that he has helped set apart sequential art as
a unique and viable art form deserving of more critical respect than is
currently attributed to it in relation to the whole of twentieth century
accomplishment. His work illustrates how sequential art is the most precise
culmination of ideas and forms that more established and recognized artistic
and literary genres of the twentieth century strove to realize. Though he
recently announced his retirement from comics, it is hard to conceive of
any future works of his not creating the "continuous present," as comics
and graphic novels so perfectly do, proving their unmitigated success as
the one unmitigated twentieth century art form to bridge the fourth dimension.

References

Bradbury, Malcolm and Richard Ruland. From Puritanism to Postmodernism:
The Story of American Literature. London: Routledge, 1991.

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